CONTEST!Helena is running a contest on her Facebook fan page and all you have to do to enter is leave a comment on the page ("Hi, Helena!" is enough). Each week a free ecopy of "It's a Teacher's Life...!" will be sent to one of the commenters. If you're not successful one week, just leave a comment the next for another chance to win - it's that simple! This is the link: http://bit.ly/8IBMuEThanks very much!

Love the illustrated poetry, Helena. When I edit poetry for my clients, I always tell them to pare out unneeded adjectives and adverbs. You're good with a paring knife. (-:Thank you for bring this to us, Liana.

Thank you, Liana, for hosting me and thank you Kathy, Darcia and Carolyn for your comments.

You're right, Kathy - teachers would love that child remote. I could very much sympathise with my neighbour (a young mother) when she was telling me about how she wished she could just press a button and her children would be quiet - and that gave me the idea for the poem.

Darcia - the Essence of Light poem was written as part of a poetry contest in response to the picture you see.

Thank you, Carolyn - being such a versatile writer yourself and knowing so much about poetry, I really appreciate your comment. It's not something I ever remember formally learning, but I've come to realise how important 'paring' is when writing poetry, simply through practice.

If anyone would like to read extracts from my book "It's a Teacher's Life..." (a collection of stories in verse based on my own teaching experiences), then just go to my website

Helena, thank you for being here! I was looking for your URL and then my programme got stuck and had to let it go...thanks for adding it. For the same reason I couldn't copy and paste a photo of yours at the top.

Karen - I've come to the conclusion that if I could design a child mute button, my fortune would be made!

Stephen - many thanks for the compliment.

Liana - I'm sorry you had trouble with the Blogger program. Not to worry about my photo. Hope all is working OK for you now.

Dana - you're welcome!

Katie - nice to meet another tennis fan! Unfortunately, I haven't been able to play tennis for over 2 years now because of a broken wrist. But I hope to be able to get back to playing a little this summer.

The White Snail

Bilingual kids' book

The White Snail

Written and illustrated by Iliana Metallinou

TheWhiteSnailincludes an exciting story and educational material appropriate for young readers.It is the first of a series of books that aims to encourage childrento read stories while, at the same time learn about nature.At the end of each book there are educational activities.

TheWhiteSnail’sbasicthemeisself-esteem that develops from early childhood.Theheroofthisstorybelievesthatheisnot equaltotheothersnailsjust because he is different.This story is about the differences among people or peoples generally.It caters not only to young kids but also to adults, parents and teachers.

This series also aims to highlight some of the small miracles of nature, that we usually take for granted.TheWhiteSnailencouragesthereadertonoticesnailscloselyandlearnsomefactsaboutthemvia the educational activity at the end of the book.

BILINGUALΤΕΧΤ: GREEK/ENGLISH

This book can be read both in Greek and English.Thus, it caters to Foreign Language education as well as to readers all over the world.